Robert Stern, one of the leading philosophers on transcendental philosophy and the philosophy of Hegel, now tackles the age old issue of moral obligation in Understanding Moral Obligation. Throughout the book he traces the issue of moral obligation as it run through the work of Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard, shaping their relation to each other. In doing so, he is able to discuss this issue at two different levels: at the level of the history of ideas, in showing the role these issues have played in the thought of Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard, and their period more generally; and at the philosophical level, in helping to understand these issues more clearly in a systematic way.

As regards the first, more historical level, he offers an account of a central strand in the history of modern ethics from the mid eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries, an account which differs, what he calls standard story, which begins from what turns out to be a misconceived version of Kant's argument from autonomy. In many histories of modern ethics, Kant is supposed to have ushered in an anti-realist or constructivist turn by holding that unless we ourselves "author" or lay down moral norms and values for ourselves, our autonomy as agents will be threatened. However, despite its appeal to the modern mind, this picture of self-legislation is seen to raise certain fundamental difficulties, particularly the threat of emptiness: if no prior set of moral values obtain, what is to guide the legislating subject and to prevent the act of legislation from becoming groundless? This, so called Kantian paradox is supposed to set agenda for Kant's successors, such as Hegel and Kierkegaard.

In this book, Robert Stern challenges the cogency of this argument from autonomy, and claims that Kant never subscribed to it. In fact, he suggests that, even though considerations of autonomy played a central role within his ethics, Kant saw these considerations in a much narrower way than his anti-realist and constructivist interpreters have assumed. For, says Stern, "it is only when it comes to accounting obligatoriness of certain actions, rather than their moral goodness or rightness, that the concern about autonomy really leads toward self-legislation for Kant" (p. 2). Stern believes that it is this narrower concern that frames, in Stern's terms, "the problem of moral obligation" for Kant—namely, the problem of accounting for the imperatival or binding force of morality in a way that makes this compatible with our autonomy: how can this be accounted without taking away our freedom?

In the rest of the historical narrative he follows out the development from Kant to Hegel to Kierkegaard, taking the problem of moral obligation as his starting point. As opposed to standard story which sees Hegel as being preoccupied with difficulties created by Kant's own way of dealing with the Kantian paradox, he claims instead, Hegel faced the difficulties created by Kant's way of dealing with the problem of moral obligation. Stern argues that since this was seen by Hegel to rely on a dualistic view of the will, this dissatisfaction with Kant led Hegel to offer a different solution to the problem of moral obligation, by putting forward a "social command" account, which treats duty as arising from the constraints imposed on us by others. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, held that only by returning to something more like a divine command theory that Kant rejected could this demand be restored to the right level. The debate Stern focuses on in this book, therefore concerns whether this obligatoriness should be located in ourselves as in Kant, in others as in Hegel and in God as in Kierkegaard.

Throughout the book, Stern traces the historical dialectic that drove the development of these respective theories, and clearly and sympathetically considers their merits and disadvantages. However, following this journey, as Stern also admits, he has in fact been led around in a circle. For, as he presents Kant's argument from autonomy was not directed against divine command accounts of obligation; but in arriving at Kierkegaard, he also claims that it is with a divine command account that we have ended up. The obvious question this raises, then, is whether one of the three positions that make up this circle is to be preferred over the others, or whether their respective merits and demerits put them on a par; locked in a perpetual dialectical struggle with one another without hope of resolution.

Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard is therefore sets up a comparative study of these three thinkers, not as regards their ethical outlooks in their entirety, but as regards "what gives moral obligations their binding or constraining character?—ourselves, others or God. The book is accordingly, divided to three main parts. In the first part, he sets up the issue of moral obligation and critically examines Kant's argument from autonomy and moral obligation. In the following chapters, devoted to Hegel and Kierkegaard, he critically examines their solutions to the problem of moral obligation through dialectically first considering Hegel's critique of Kant and then Kierkegaard's critique of Hegel.

Stern offers a fresh and a new perspective on the historical question of the problem of moral obligation and as related with it, on the question of autonomy and the obligatoriness of the moral. I believe that the discussion in Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard will cast some light on the philosophical issues underlying them concerning autonomy, moral realism, divine command theories and so on. This is an excellent book for academicians and any philosophy student who has an interest in ethical issues. I believe, this book provides an extremely useful framework for academicians who are interested in doing some future analytic work on morality, and especially on moral obligation and also on the history of morality. Since Stern's discussion of the problem of moral obligation traces a dialectical-historical critique from Kant to Hegel to Kierkegaard, this book is also an excellent resource for academicians and philosophy students who want to further his/her ideas about these philosophers.

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